China’s future under Xi Jinping: Challenges ahead

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Ladies and gentleman welcome i'm john blaxland from the Strategic Defense Study Center I'd like to begin by acknowledging and celebrating the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and pay respects to their elders past and present.
Well what an evening here we are at the John Curtin school who told us free of pangs of association of ties with Britain pointed us towards ties to the United States tonight we have professor Bates killed professor at the strategic and defense study singer great colleague I just touch on the Strategic Defense study center i mentioned here the Strategic Defense study center because it is a unique institution that deals with strategic studies that deals with Australia's defense military affairs and asia-pacific security and a more suitable speaker for tonight it would be hard would be hard-pressed to find professor Bates guilt was the chief executive officer of the United States study center in sydney from 2012 2015 he was director and chief executive of the stockholm international peace research institute simply before that he's been hit the Fremen chair in China studies at csis in Washington from 2002 2007 he has been a prolific writer but particularly what we within Australia we think about him as a u.s. studies scholar but really his expertise is very much about China and we are we are very privileged to have him here with us tonight he's written pages new multilateralism with Columbia University Press rising star china's new security diplomacy and Chinese arms acquisition from abroad arm straight transparency in Southeast Asia Chinese arms transfers and his new book forthcoming in 2017 is currently total China getting it right for Australia how appropriate is that for us tonight ladies and gentlemen we are very privileged to have.
With us professor bites kill without further do you let me hand over two bites now like stinky thank you very much John and thank you to everyone for coming out this evening it's been a exciting day I can tell you as an American and I suppose there's still a sliver of hope that my hoped for a presidential candidate would would emerge victorious but it's looking less and less the case and I'm sure many of you may well prefer to have your eyes glued to the television this evening and try to follow just what the outcomes of that election will be but I hope to offer you something is it at least equally interesting and I hope even more important as we talk about our long-term future here in australia i want to thank especially my colleagues at the strategic defence studies center here Korbel School of Australian National University most of all for the opportunity to to be working here as John noted it's a world-renowned institution having celebrated its 50th anniversary just this year and stands out really in the pantheon of globally recognized centers for strategic defence and security related studies especially with regard to the asia-pacific region and I might even argue its ranks right up there in the very best of those centers that work on those issues so it's a great privilege and honor for me to join such a distinguished faculty and i was very pleased then when it was suggested that I might want to talk a little bit about the relationship that Australia has with China and and and what the future of China might look like now as i was thinking about that i wanted to organize it in a way that might be a little bit more compelling a little bit more engaging and and even connected the personalities in that regard and of course in China they're probably has not been in certainly recent decades a leader with quite the same character quite the same personality.
Quite the same ambition as we see in the current leader of China Xi Jinping so tonight i want to talk a bit about about him and about his challenges that he faces going forward with China and what that might mean for the rest of us in the world the paramount leader of China Xi Jinping has been in this office now for four years and he's just passed one-third of his expected 10-year term now in the view of many Western and analysts and not to mention many in China she has achieved a quasi called like standing within China reminiscent of the nineteen sixties when the great helmsman mounted don't lorded over the Chinese masses.
According to relatively reliable polling she is enormously popular amongst the lab I Sheen the common folks on the street and he's the subject of dozens and dozens of laudatory videos and other social messaging cranked out by the Chinese propaganda machine is declared chinese dream of joining woman's weight off fishing or realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation the China dream resonates across all sectors of a proud and ambitious society riding on this popularity he's overseen a far-reaching anti-corruption campaign bagging extremely well-connected political military and business figures as well as potential political rivals and put himself in charge of numerous leading small groups which direct policy and sensitive issues such as internal security economic reform and foreign affairs casting his eyes abroad she has visited nearly 50 different countries in just these four years and has set out an ambitious foreign policy agenda he has overseen China's massive land reclamation activities in the South China Sea expanding China's military footprint thousands of kilometers offshore.
So it seems he's had a remarkable run a remarkable run or or has he it's worthwhile asking just how powerful is Xi Jinping what do we know about his leadership style and his vision for China's future more importantly for China and for the rest of us will he be able to deliver on the China dream or is he in fact far more constrained and vulnerable than he may seem and what will this mean then for his name for China's neighbors in the future so what do we begin a little bit at the beginning as it were and review a little bit about what we know about she's background or at least as the Chinese party state would want us to understand that background in a country in the country that was China in 1953 june nineteen fifty-three he was born to great privilege less than four years after the founding of the people's republic as the son of a vice premier and revolutionary hero she junction the rope and the relative comfort so let's see junction picture there the relative comforts of his early life inside the walls of John hi the communist leaders compound adjacent to the Forbidden City came to a precipitous end in 1962 when his father was purged from his leadership positions accused by mom of being a anti-party rightist at first held in detention at the start of the cultural revolution in 1966 he was sent to safer conditions in the countryside in 1968 living near relatives in you're not in shaanxi province and working alongside the local peasantry he did not leave yet on until nineteen seventy five seven formative years of his life between the ages of 15 and 22 in 1975 he entered my university and studied Chemical Engineering but as a worker peasant soldier student prior to the full opening of chinese universities at the time.
He spent considerable amounts of his time studying marxist-leninist multiple thought and the virtues of the People's Liberation Army as well as doing a fair bit of farm work on the beijing university campus from 1979 at the age of 26 and with his father rehabilitated he began a rapid ascent through party and government ranks serving and regional leadership roles and more prosperous and growing eastern provinces of China eventually becoming the party chief of shanghai in 2007 but he was only in that post for a mere seven months before being further elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee in October of 2007 making him one of the most 9 powerful men in China at the time five years later in November 2012 four years ago he became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and head of the Communist Party Central Military Commission and then several months later in early took 2013 he assumed the title of President thus fully confirming his status as the Paramount chinese leader just shy of his 60th birthday on the personal side he's been married for nearly 30 years to ponle been his second wife who is 9 years his junior she is today a major general in the People's Liberation Army and a well-known singer and celebrity entertainer who for most of their married life was more famous in China than her husband.
They have one child together she means a a girl who graduated in 2014 from Harvard University she and his wife are a true Chinese power couple and are wildly popular by all accounts this life experience as a party princeling as a survivor and as a resolute devote a to the party adds up in a way that makes him.
More confident decisive insistent on ideological adherence and focused on pursuing Chinese interests then his most recent predecessors now in office for just over almost just just four years she has used this time to consolidate his power and remove potential rivals generate popular support for his leadership and take control of the policy apparatus across a broad spectrum of domestic and foreign-policy issues he's done this by launching an intensive anti-corruption and party discipline campaign reviving ideological zeal stepping up propaganda stifling nearly all dissent and strongly discouraging even mildly contrary thinking in contrast to his two most immediate predecessors john zimmerman and Huijin Tom he has put forward a number of bold initiatives and visionary ideas both at home and abroad at home his vision is probably best encapsulated in the concept of the Chinese dream this phrase probably more than any other today has come to define she's leadership particularly at home and has become ubiquitous in china in the media billboards advertising peppered throughout party pronouncements in school textbooks nearly everywhere you look on the streets of China you will see a reference to the China dream as part of the China dream official statements point to the goal of China becoming quote a moderately well-off society by 2021 that will be the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party and second becoming a fully developed country by 2049 which would be the 100 anniversary of the founding of the PRC so those two so-called centenary goals maybe in a nutshell best spell out what the ambitions certainly are of the China dream now.
This very hopeful and optimistic vision which Jinping stands for has been accompanied by the toughest crackdown on dissension since the 10-man crisis of 1989 and accompanied by the official stoking of nationalist sentiments undersea Jinping china has had a growing incidence of harassment the tensions and disappearances of activists lawyers journalists lawyers intellectuals and publishers and others who might differ in their view about the China dream and about Chinese Communist Party leadership generally this trend has been reinforced by the passage of new tougher security and surveillance laws in China stepped up monitoring of foreign organizations working in China and much more extensive policing of the internet and social medium the issues by the party of document entitled concerning the situation in the ideological sphere sometimes called document number 9 2013 gives us an idea of the aim of these of these of these policies under siege in pink document number 9 listed seven dangerous forces which threaten Chinese Communist Party authority more recently the Ministry of Education has issued similar restrictions on classroom teaching in Chinese universities and in both document number nine and in the Ministry of Education declarations among the problem issues and challenges for China were such things as Western constitutional democracy and other Western ideas such as universal values civil society constitutional democracy and press freedoms we should note that this crackdown has not only unfolded in mainland China but has extended abroad to accompany compass Hong Kong for example and even further afield in some instances even including Australia to encourage loyalty and out through outreach and at times intimidation aimed at persons of Chinese descent living abroad both chinese citizens and otherwise in many respects it seems these campaigns of tighter oversight are working last year for example Reporters Without Borders rank China 175th out of a hundred eighty countries in its world press freedom index ahead of only Somalia Syria turkmenistan North Korea and Eritrea we've seen also an expanding military footprint for china under siege in being most obviously in China's island building and construction of military facilities in the South China Sea and the chinese takeover of scarborough shoal from the philippines in 2012 in another interesting advance for China's military presence abroad he was announced earlier this year that China would build a naval logistics base in Djibouti primarily intended to service China's contribution to International anti-piracy operations in the gulf of aden and to help support significant numbers of Chinese international peacekeepers under the UN flag operating in Africa on the foreign policy front Xi Jinping has initiated new plans such as the asian infrastructure investment bank or aiib and the Silk Road economic belt and the 21st century maritime Silk Road the ladder to known more familiarly as one belt one Road these initiatives look to invest some 1.4 trillion dollars to build roads railways airports harbors energy plants telecommunications networks and other critical infrastructure which will link China to inland and littoral markets across Asia to the African East Coast and even on to Europe but in spite of these personal political successes for xi jinping at home and abroad he nevertheless faces a range of challenges many of which are reflective of his own leadership and which could could undermine his vision for the China dream and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation so I'd like to spend the rest of the evening having a look at some of those challenges that we have to as analysts contra poised against what has also been a relatively successful run for seton ping as well let's first look at the domestic front and then we'll turn to China's foreign relations so on the domestic front Xi Jinping in all of China face greater economic uncertainty today than at any time since the introduction of done shopping is transformational strategy of golf wife on or reform and opening more than three decades ago according to arthur kroeber one of the world's leading analysts of the chinese economy this uncertainty is most clearly in evidence by the following first we know that the pace of China's economic growth is slowing but importantly the slowdown a structural in nature and not merely cyclical third this slowdown reflects difficult transitions that other fast-growing economies failed to navigate in the past and perhaps most importantly it is entirely unclear whether beijing policies are able to adequately deal with the fundamental economic challenges china now faces at its core the slowdown comes as a result of a downturn in the long utilize platform for Chinese growth investment in its capital stock put that another way.
China's remarkable growth over the past three decades has relied primarily on its great success and efficiency and constructing the building blocks of a modern export-led industrial economy freeways railroads harbors airports urban agglomeration housing manufacturing facilities etc but this period of booming capital investment or resource mobilization is coming to an end building yet one more high-speed train or yet one more airport or yet one more new urban center will add marginally less value to China's growth than in the past and we know that China is increasingly facing the problem of overcapacity as the economy slows too much heavy industry too much housing too much underutilized capital stock the challenge for xi jinping's economic future will be to rely less on resource mobilization and capital investment and more on extracting efficiencies from those resources already in place and shift towards a greater consumption-led growth model but we know this but so does he but this is a very very difficult transition fraught with economic and political risk whereas the past growth model could benefit from state-led and state-owned investments and decision-making and with less concern about efficient use of capital China's future growth model needs to get the state out of the way to be more focused on efficiency and allow the market for all of its vagaries and unpredictable ways to have a far larger role in determining the efficient allocation of those resources to put that more sharply such a transition will require massive layoffs in the state-owned sector and breaking the rice balls of powerful stakeholders across the top of much of the inefficient state-owned sector people who have strong personal incentives to keep the system just like it is more broadly it means lessening the grip on the economy and allowing greater openness transparency and market-oriented oriented forces to take the lead but it's not clear yet now into our the beginning of the fifth year of Sue Jinping's leadership it's not clear yet that the Chinese party state is prepared to take these kinds of steps instead the default response seems to be economically more debt and more capital investment no less authority than the recently former Chinese minister of finance and one of China's most acclaimed economist logie way said last year when he was the Minister of Finance that China has a 50-50 chance of getting stuck in the middle income trap the middle income trap that's to say not continuing up the ladder of growth to a highly developed economy if serious reforms are not implemented soon logie way lost his job this week probably because of age limits but who knows but that voice is not authoritative enough.
What are we to make of the fact that Chinese transferred a record 670 billion dollars out of the country and 2015 all of it to invest in Melbourne I think that's just a joke but 67 75 billion dollars out of the country which could be sick a signal of a growing concern among investors in China about the country's longer-term economic prospects this political and economic challenge which she Jinping faces is critical but could be addressed with the proper types of policies but it's further exacerbated by a challenge against which he has very little recourse and that's China's aging population in just 10 years by 2025 approximately 14 persons in China will be over the age of 60 that will number about 367 million people more than the population of the united states over the next 25 years the ratio of working-age persons to retirees will rapidly shrink further from about six to one today the ratio of working to retiree people 621 today 2221 in 20-40 so in a nutshell China's going to grow old before it grows rich and that's going to add downward pressures on china's growth and all the more so if much-needed economic reforms go on implemented under Xi Jinping other domestic and social economic challenges for see Jinping and the party leadership would have to include the continuing challenge of corruption we will not have time to delve into this in detail this evening I think you're all relatively familiar with the problem but suffice to say that in spite of see Jinping's anti-corruption Drive grass remains a big big problem just read the documents coming out of the recently completed six plenum no less authority then she Jinping himself openly acknowledges that corruption is the biggest threat to party rule saying is july first speech this year commemorating the party's not fifth anniversary quote if we cannot manage the party and government strictly leaving prominent problems within the party unsettled our party will sooner or later be consigned to history and he's talking about the challenge of corruption and what it means for the legitimacy of the party not unrelated the income gap in China continues to widen between rich and poor another potential problem for a party concerned with ostensibly representing the needs of the masses China's income inequality has steadily worsened over the past decade and according to the most recent data China ranks about 29 in terms of income disparity ranking higher than the United States but below countries such as Brazil and South Africa but it's trending upward towards Brazil and South Africa territory according to chinese official data some 200 million chinese today still live under the poverty line which is defined in China as less than two dollars to US dollars a day China's monumental environmental challenges are legion they're big they're complex there is difficult and complex as the country itself.
China's air pollution of course is legendary and Beijing is not even the worst of the country's major cities surface and groundwater is widely contaminated in some places even unsuitable for irrigation or industrial use deforestation desertification dwindling arable land resulting from centuries of intensive agriculture and more recently intensive urbanization pose additional challenges and these are not only environmental problems but of course our political as well as pollution and toxins endanger people's lives.
Environmental political but also economic as we know that China's environmental challenges can slow or otherwise in peril chinese economic growth in the face.
Of his tougher disciplinary measures slowing economic prospects and other domestic challenges it shouldn't be a surprise then to us to know that there is growing disgruntlement in some important sectors of chinese society at the very top of the pyramid there are signs that she Jinping must still assert his legitimacy within the upper leadership of the party to fully stake his claim to power.
I think we still need to read the tea leaves coming out of the sixth plenum meeting and in the run-up of course to the to the Communist Party Congress at late next year I'll be very interested to hear from folks in this room who follow these issues very closely but i think it's fair to say that he continues to have some difficulties some challenges in fully staking his claim to power he took a highly unusual step recently in publicly acknowledging that several out the top level political and military leaders including the flamboyant rising star princeling boshi lie and former internal security chief joy aankhon were involved in not just corruption but according to xi jinping himself quote political conspiracies unquote to quote split the party to admit this tells us a lot about the imaginations at the uppermost reaches of the Chinese political system she's sweeping anti-corruption Drive against the highest levels of the party and military means he is generating a lot of discontent fear and no doubt some enemies intellectually leads at universities in think tanks cultural institutions in the media and even in the wider society openly criticized the country's turn toward a harder form of authoritarianism while increase while increasingly suppresses even modest attempts at contrarian or out-of-the-box expression among the broader population there is also evidence of growing discontent the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published a study in 2012 claiming that there are over 100,000 quote-unquote mass incidents and protests in China every year plans to shut down wasteful and unproductive state-owned enterprises will generate millions of unemployed workers in China's major cities which is another potentially volatile problem for chinese leaders ethnic unrest around China's periphery and particularly in its West remains a persistent problem for chinese authorities and often takes on quite violent forms such as in seen job in that respect I think it bears remembering that about half of the Chinese landmass forty-nine percent of the Chinese mainland territory is made up of just four provinces Tibet seen John inner mongolia and Ching hai for provinces traditionally territories of non on people's here are the results of a poll taken late last year yeah late last year showing the high percentage of Chinese respondents who lists corrupt officials pollution and income inequality as the top problems facing china this poll conducted i think by by the pew global attitude survey relatively reliable just to make the point that i'm not making this up according to pretty good survey data the people of China feel strongly either that the corruption in environmental degradation income inequality are becoming big problems note that eighty-four percent of the respondents felt that corruption is either a very big remodel moderately big problem so these are things that she Jinping certainly needs to wrestle with he's fully aware of them and the challenges may well grow larger let's then turn to some of the foreign policy challenges which in ping will be facing looking at this map just the map where China sits we can see that the country already lives in a difficult neighborhood china has the world's largest land borders extending more than 22,000 kilometers direct land frontiers with 14 states the most in the world tied with Russia me.
Part-time borders with several more four of these land neighbors are nuclear weapon States or nearly so India Pakistan Russia and North Korea and if we include forward based US nuclear weapons we could say five nuclear-armed neighbours it's also the case that China's economy is highly dependent on its maritime approaches for exports and imports and its economic center of gravity is highly concentrated on its eastern seaboard all of which further highlight China's strategic vulnerabilities.
But aside from these inescapable geostrategic certainties for china china's external environment looks worse today under siege in pink than it was 10 years ago on the Korean Peninsula for example China North Korea relations are just about the worst that they've been in decades.
Owing to Pyongyang pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability and Beijing apparent inability and or unwillingness to stop it.
That in turn has soured the political and security relationship of South Korea demonstrated most recently by souls decision to jointly deploy with the United States batteries of terminal high altitude area defense or Thad systems to counter the North Korean threat systems which Beijing claims could undermine its own missile force China's political and security relations with Japan are likewise at a low sparked by a sovereignty dispute over the senkaku/diaoyu islands but sustained by decades of combative rhetoric towards Japan and especially toward the policies of current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo a bad.
Don't they look happy together in a poll by the pew organization in june of this year fully eighty-six percent of Japanese surveyed said they had an unfavorable view of China in Southeast Asia the story of difficult political diplomatic and security relations continues primarily as a result of Chinese actions in the South China Sea especially since 2012 there is of course now some evidence that China and the Philippines may try to reach a settlement of some kind coming out of the recent visit by President to death day 22 Beijing but overall I think we can argue that China's reputation has been badly damaged in the region and certainly internationally as a result of its recent actions in the South China Sea more broadly in the region we've seen a gravitation amongst many of the key states toured the united states who are concerned about China's growing influence in the region here in Taiwan following eight years of stable and steadily improving relations with China citing when the leader of the Democratic Progressive Party was elected earlier this year and took office in May she's not expected to take any contentious pro-independence steps but cross-strait ties heavily so far become cooler and a little bit less certain and as for the United States China's most important bilateral relationship beijing Washington ties have likewise soured over the past three years across a range of issues including cybersecurity trade and maritime security in the East and South China Seas given the events of today while we may not know quite yet who is the president of the United States beginning in 2017 most analysts have argued that regardless whether it's Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton the early stages of relations with China will be difficult.
China's growing power particular its military might has raised concerns particularly among China's nearest neighbors and especially those who have outstanding Tara.
Title dispute with China about how China wants to use this growing power this in turn has contributed to various forms of diplomatic economic and military efforts to counterbalance china in the region and beyond.
So putting it more pointedly Xi Jinping and his fellow leaders continue to struggle with transforming China's growing power more to its advantage or if you want to draw from the title of David chambers recent book while China has surely gone global it nevertheless remains a partial power so who is she on the basis of this very brief review his background and the challenges he faces at home and abroad.
What can we say about his leadership style and the kind of China will all be working with in the years ahead unfortunately there's so much about China's leaders that we simply do not know but with that caveat in mind here are four sort of simple takeaways that I'd like to share first-party first and politics to the 4g Jinping strikes me as a true believer in the Chinese Communist Party more inclined than his predecessors to look to the party and its extensive apparatus of ideology propaganda and control and the parties pivotal pivotal role indeed indispensable role in his view in the long narrative of reversing China's humiliation and re-establishing China's greatness the China dream this makes a lot of sense given xi jinping's own life story as a privileged princeling son of the party Lee who benefited massively from those party connections and his very life arcing from the earliest days of the People's Republic to today.
Parallels the incredible trajectory of China's rise for she won abiding constant throughout that life experience has been the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party hence we see far greater importance.
Of the core domestic political imperative that is survival of the Chinese Communist Party as an even more pressing priority under siege in being and both domestic and foreign policies are changing in ways to support that priority second she appears to have reformulated the concept of peaceful rise or hoping Chi in a more assertive and nationalist direction under his predecessors johnson- gentle and especially under who gentle China clearly recognized the need for a generally peaceful external environment so that it could more readily access vital input sports economic growth markets capital raw materials and technology and stay focused on domestic stability and development in essence this peaceful rise conformed with done shoppings well-known axiom that China should be patient and not flex its muscles or in Chinese as it's known how long way which is often translated as hide your capabilities and bide your time or just hide & Bide for short undersea domestic stability and development remain a priority but he seems far less concerned with stable external relations.
Why is that the case my speculation is twofold.
On the one hand it is because China's domestic political social and economic challenges have become even more present but on the other hand and here's the important change Xi Jinping appears to have concluded that a stronger more active and more nationalistic assertion of China's interests abroad even at the risk of serious deterioration in relations with key neighbors is the best way forward for dealing with many of China's domestic problems so put that another way this will mean less hiding inviting and perhaps less peaceful more rise third.
Given what is at stake from she's perspective he has proven to be a much bigger risk taker in numerous ways different from his comparatively low key predecessors she is determined to leverage the parties control at home and China's power broad in pursuit of chinese national interests as he sees them.
It is a highly risky approach with the potential for high rewards but also potentially high-profile failures fourth and finally we should not lose sight of the fact that she Jinping faces many constraints and vulnerabilities on both his domestic and foreign policy agendas and they may they may be catching up with him perhaps the biggest constraint and she's power is the same unresolved conundrum that have been faced by all of his predecessors since done shopping.
That is any serious effort to introduce the economic and political reforms necessary to assure that China emerges as a secure prosperous and contented society will almost certainly weekend the one-party authority of the Chinese Communist Party but to assure those reforms and instead further tighten the parties grip which seems to be she's preference to date this puts China stability and even prosperity at risk of course the big question going forward is will he doubled down or will he moderate this approach for the near term that is certainly for the next year and in the run-up to the Communist Party Congress later that in 2017 i suspect it will be the former he will continue to see it as a necessary though not always winning formula to solidify his standing and take greater advantage of China's growing power it is possible possible over the medium term meaning out to 20 22 when she would complete his expected second and final five-year term as China's paramount leader he would find it possible in that interim to loosen the.
Parties grip at home and walk back some of China's assertiveness abroad but I think that's highly highly uncertain at this stage and we certainly won't know that I don't think until 2018 or 20 19 at the earliest so looking ahead what can we say all this might mean for Australia and for the wider international community Xi Jinping's current directions in foreign and domestic policy have serious implications for australia and the wider a specific and I think warrant a more cautious approach in capitals across the region including in-camera she's economic predilections in favor of a strong role for the state and which protect much of the state-owned sector raise serious medium-term concerns about China's future growth prospects as well as prospects for opportunities available to Australian business particularly in China he advances a more muscular nationalism in China's relations with foreign governments as well as businesses with an increased use of economic coercion as an instrument of statecraft the tightening grip of party authority and associated crackdown and dissenting voices at home and even abroad including in australia also runs counter to australian interests and values Australian interests rightly seek a more open stable productive and mutually beneficial relationship with China and a china which is increasingly prosperous stable just and constructively contributing to regional and global affairs China should seek the same but under China's current leadership this may prove more challenging than ever thank you.
Now we've got time for questions ladies and gentlemen so there will be some rubbing microphones Jasmine still i'll get the microphone and we'll pass the questions do.
Thank you the base i really got a lot of from the commander of knowledge about the China and it just now i have noticed that you use to terms with the translational to marlon wayans chinese dream and another is China dream or tango stream and also you mentioned are carrying your speech know what will have differences.
OIC thank you and well I'm glad you caught that of course that the term in Chinese could probably be translated as both a direct translation would be China dream and I think the way you're raising that question is an interesting one because what you're asking is whether or not this is a dream for gym wall or China the nation or or is it a Chinese dream meaning are we talking about a dream for the Chinese people i used it probably in the same meaning as xi jinping would mean it and I'll forevermore never say Chinese dream i'll make sure i say China dream as he would translate it really sets directly translate but the point your reason is very interesting one and I suppose that is exactly what chinese people themselves are asking is whether or not the dream he's putting forward does indeed represent the dream of the Chinese people is that is that the question you're asking I see but that's a little easier to answer.
I'm i would say no at least because if we're simply talking about material game getting richer you know having a more prosperous life if that's what the China dream means then I suppose we could say yes I don't interpret it as such because as i was trying to make clear here at the at the real center of the China dream is the legitimacy and survival of the Chinese Communist Party when windy and when people talk about the American dream.
I think there's a far less political content to it are far less than understanding at least the way I learned about it when I was a kid that somehow held up the legitimacy of one particular authoritarian party or another maybe that will change under the new leadership in America are never gonna sit at this gentleman effective and just mrs. Zbornak come in and also the question that you mentioned about China being growing all before they get reach but i have to mention it to you I jump into China a couple times they are in a Chinese people are now able to enjoy high-speed real first-class model freeways the first deer city and the second ESD as the mass rapid transit system now I don't like the wood which which is commonly kiss connotation of building i like to use these are prosper and I think the Chinese people are able to enjoy right now in this meal in the last time is near 3.6 billion passengers treat completed within two months and we don't require infrastructure that trick by 6pm beating messengers you know what is the concept is that is important to the population mother that in America North America you were to get not what I'm trying to say is that chinese are already prospers and when you say to regrow to all before they get rich in this country in Australia we have a reach but we don't have that facility not real long last rapid transport and look at our highways with the second deal that were so one time dimension to say please look into this respect that china is not going to all before they getting to reach they are already very prosperous ok thank you thank you no you're absolutely right in many respects the the only comment I would make is you know what what do we make of continuing poverty in the countryside what do we make of the figure the Chinese official figure that still 200 million people are nowhere near rich and probably another 200 million people would not be considered rich by any Western Standard & and the obviously you're right if we're simply trying to define rich in terms of uh income per capita it's going to be a very very long time before that would be the sort of outcome for china so i take your points they're right but I think it also agree that there are continuing very very large gaps in China in terms of income and that not everyone is living the Chinese dream to win the blue shit Thank You professor the presentation david lindsay from the research school management.
I think Maxie tone once said you can correct me here the guys that don't don't learn from history are bound to repeat it and I'm just wondering if there's a case historical case where one country so aligned commercially and economically on one side and relies strategically and mirror militarily so much on the other and whether we can learn from that and there's no prizes for guessing which country on thinking about well certainly it would be difficult for for Australia to itself look to its own history to find lessons of such an unprecedented situation it's very new the situation that Australia's facing today as i understand Australian history where is in the past you know until the recent the recent past both the strategic and the economic partner was more or less the same this is changed.
So what could work we look to history to try to try and draw some lessons I think it's very very difficult to do so but nevertheless I don't think it's in a possible situation for for Australia too to manage in fact i'm increasingly of the mind that it's a false dichotomy it's a false paradigm for analysis it doesn't help us really in sorting through the sorts of prioritization and decisions which australian policymakers and people need to make about its relationship with China and the United States the fact is that both the United States and China are extremely important security and economic partners of Australian that is the concept sorry that's complicated.
It's not black and white but it's real life that is the paradigm that we need to take on board I as we wrestle with what I agree are unprecedented a foreign policy challenges because of some of the the dichotomies that do exist the United States is not the largest trading partner of Australia certainly that title belongs to China the United States is by far the largest investor in china in Australia 10 x 10 to 15 times more investment in Australia then in China currently has and of course we're to chat with Australian investors park your superannuation futures they park in the United States not China so the American down those very basic simple fast we cannot say that America is not an important economic partner of Australia likewise China is increasingly while in the news we receive a lot of sort of concerns about China's growth as a military power but that doesn't deny the china also plays an important role as a security actor which has benefits for Australia that may sound strange but it's true.
For example conducting anti-piracy activities in the gulf of aden increasingly stepping up its counterterrorism and intelligence sharing.
Activity uh-uh-uh the largest peacekeeper UN peacekeeper of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council and even more broadly one can argue in many many scholars do argue that China's 40-year focus on domestic development and it's remarkable economic success story has been a critical factor in explaining why since 1978 there has been no major interstate conflict in the asia-pacific region in spite of many many dire predictions to the contrary in all those ways China's playing an important security role for Australia so I think we need to be more nuanced and I thinking and not say China's economic the US strategic end of story it's much more complicated than that they are both important economic and security partners for Australia.
Yes that's going to make your foreign policy task more difficult but a lot more interesting and a lot more realistic.
Thank you very much for this talk it was fascinating and I'm particularly interested in some of the non-western challenges we're seeing to the Western led international legal order and you focused i think absolutely rightly on China's part in this story i'm interested in.
I'm looking at some of the other challenges as well and the relationships between them so it in the united states they're obviously have concerns about some of the challenges from china and south china tea they also have concerns about some of the challenges from Russia and with Crimea and interference potential election and and they're also particularly concerned sometimes about at areas of International weather two states are acting together and cybersecurity is a very interesting example of that where there's a relative standoff in terms of international norms being developed between the Chinese the Russians on the one hand and some of the western states on the other so i just wanted to draw you out a little bit on China's alliances with other non western states and particularly with Russia with you saw anything in that or whether you think it's really a child by itself often on some of these issues that's a very complicated question obviously take a long time to provide a very sufficient answer just maybe I just to make a few observations first we should not lose sight of the fact that if you take a slightly longer term perspective on China's called China's engagement of the global community dating and say from about nineteen eighty actually china has had a remarkable openness to accepting embracing and even implementing and even enforce them i would say the vast majority even most if not almost all norms and rules and that sort of underpin you know the international system as we have come to know it over the past 70 to 100 years and it's easy to take off what we're talking about right.
I think everyone's familiar with that we we should lose sight of that that I think it's been a remarkable achievement of the international community in being open to engaging china and i think also of some political courage of chinese leaders to take those steps seeing them in their interest to do so and even going further to become you know contributors to the global public good and some of the issues you've raised more recently yes our concerns and I suppose if I want to link it back to the talk you know I don't think it's I don't think it's a coincidence that some of the concerns that have arisen in the minds of the international community on such issues as you know maritime claims law of the sea cybersecurity and the like have arisen more or less coincident with the advent of the leadership is Xi Jinping not completely but it's it's interesting.
Really close of course we can't say causation but there seems to be a good deal correlation so you haven't in place the combination of both a China that can through its increased power and leverage in the international system take actions to challenge them to question them to try and put their own stamp on them to try and even create their own sets of standards and norms on certainly emerging issues like cyber security but more importantly a leadership that is willing not just able but willing to pursue these aims as I say I think largely because it's seen as so critical to maintaining little look the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party what do we do about it well i think as i said i think i'm suggesting is going to be a lot more difficult a lot more difficult because they are both willing and able to challenge many of these things and i still wouldn't lose sight though that China's by and large a constructive international contributor and I guess I wouldn't be too worried not too worried you know about would be alliances or connections with other countries that may share some other angst and concern and unhappiness with the West you know those those relationships have their own inbuilt problems which we can't lose sight of and in in many ways I think certainly for China certainly for China its long-term future rests with a stable and constructive relationship with the broad international community and I think they're smarter than simply throwing their lot in with one or two other major countries that have their own bath sets of challenges to face themselves.
Thanks for the presentation dr. go on last week in melbourne and a panel lindy up sandy white were discussing whether the voluminous meetings that Chinese and American officials have these days will dampen strategic competition and Linda's view was that well they will they are talking serious strategic issues and every day of the year except for Christmas in chinese new year and he was reply was well you can have many meetings in fancy hotels with fancy mineral water and say nothing of substance was wondering which you do you inclined to yeah he's probably been a lot of those meetings in different in different capacities and but i think i would tend to agree with with a linear occupations view on this maybe we we fall back on Churchill's famous statement about job rather than war war because there is substantive outcomes to them.
Certainly I would say it's better than the absence of them and while we could probably say that many of the high expectations that resided in the minds of lots of analysts strategists policymakers in the nineteen nineties that engaging with a increasingly open China would help to sort of moderate worst behaviour help to integrate the country in ways that were more conducive to stability and beneficial yeah more recently that's become a more challenging prospect but again let's look at the longer-term trajectory it's precisely because of those forms of engagement precisely because of those forms of interaction not only from the United States but with others around the world.
Australian that we have to thank the great progress that China has made in becoming a constructive integrated and important contributor to global comments so i don't think that simply because we can be frustrated at many turns simply because lots of mineral water gets finished without a lot of outcomes that that in itself should lead us to conclude to think that these processes don't work whether we should stop them altogether we can point to lots of examples of a pretty good success I would hold up non-proliferation is a major success story.
Precisely through lots of mineral water between Beijing and Washington or that the recent agreements on to to support the Paris Accords and to take their own bilateral actions in support of mitigating global climate change again resulting from lots of meetings so I cher Hughes skepticism or release frustration that oftentimes these meetings have no outcomes are little just to to speak to.
I would also add to that maybe you made the point that is only going to get harder right as China become stronger and has more leverage points with us and with the United States and with many many others around the world but i don't agree that that's a reason to stop doing it and I would not agree that they have not been a factor in helping to maintain the stability that those two countries have remarkably enjoyed in spite of all addictions to the contrary over the past 20 to 30 years.
This is and thanks for the hand thanks for the top today and you put up then a series of domestic challenges and in the economic one you suggested further opening of the markets was the way forward but it would seem to me that actually that's.
Typically Western response to the challenge that they fade the China faces and it seems to me that I also potentially exacerbates each of the other challenges of art from the aging population and therefore a kind of feeling that that is not necessarily the way forward for China it has to find a different balance that what might be typical in our Western economy well that that seems to be that UNC Jinping would be an agreement that there's going to be some form of muddling through and use of massive capital resources in ways that are really quite unprecedented and which is you suggest probably run counter to a lot of Western economic theory we shall see.
It's true that up till now the Chinese economic leadership have weathered some pretty tough transitions and have really had a quite remote objects Lee remarkable success story to now I guess that the critical turning point on whether one agrees or disagrees on this question is on the issue of capital mobilization and efficiency whether or not continued capital-intensive oriented growth and the amassing of greater and greater debt.
I'm not only within government knows both the not so much at the National but especially at the state and municipal levels as well as increasingly a private debt can be sustained and you're right we're sort of moving into uncharted territory at least as far as Western economist are concerned so I you may be right there may be some third way that simply has never been seen before I suspect it's going to be not really a third way but a kind of at best muddling through and continued slowing in the economic pace of growth still still you know envious levels of growth but slowing in the pace and perhaps really the question here isn't whether or not the economic model can be sustained about whether or not the economic model to the degree it in its past form it is provided the basis for the political model whether as the economic model needs to change or slows or becomes less less successful from its past will that have an impact on the political situation and I guess we really don't know.
Thank you dr. gala for covering the championship topic in such a short time huh.
My name is the quartermaster student so my question is a previous Chinese regime state-maintained this policy of non non intervention in the internal affairs of other countries are giving foreign aid without any package or any conditions given the personality traits that you have to strip off third presidential she do you expect these to change these policies to change under his leadership yes and the short answer it will and it already has and it that's an evolution actually that we saw forming even before she Jinping and it's an interesting phenomenon to follow.
I always like to remind audiences and especially ceiling Chinese audiences remind remind audiences that of course even well before she Jinping who Gentile Johnson in this notion of non-intervention you know had lots of exceptions right i mean the biggest exception being the invasion of Vietnam um that's a massive intervention in 1978 I'm of course that's not how the Chinese officially want to look at that but that was a huge intervention but aside from that we've seen as China's global interests of grown as it's a diaspora of chinese citizens have spread around the world as China's economic presence in so many far-flung parts of the globe and even increasingly in quite dangerous and troublesome parts of the world so too has grown the interest within Chinese policy circles to have the capacity to take action if necessary I think fundamentally at this stage to help protect the lives of their own citizens but as we see to build the capacity with that too maybe intervene and more robust ways down the road if necessary so yes the the policy of non-intervention has undergone a great deal more flexing a great deal more reinterpretation on the part of the Chinese leaders which i think i think at this stage is primarily driven by a need or a perceived need to want to be able to protect citizens and economic interests in different parts of the I don't see this as yet certainly known in any near-term capacity a desire to intervene into foreign countries you know to to you know unnecessarily or on any sort of unwarranted unprovoked way of course again.
China would not consider the militarization and reclamation of of islands and disputed territories in the South China Sea is an intervention into the sovereign affairs of other states they just don't consider that to be the case.
Others would obviously different you see earlier you talked about a further who essentially predicts the soft landing for the Chinese economy but um many other economist's like Jonathan Anderson looking at more hard landing and you know given the season pings put on so much importance on the 6.5 percent course target and so on what wouldn't be a massive loss of faith basis and credibility to the party if it would have a hard landing what sort of political outcomes with that lead to.
Well yes I'm i think that the basic compact between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people is still fundamentally in place that the party will continue to lead the delivery of prosperity and continued economic growth continued wealth accumulation continued improvements in the in the standards of living of the Chinese people and in return.
Obviously be granted a sort of mandate if you will by the people to continue its rule so I think that's very much in place if an economic crisis were to occur to seriously challenge or turn the trajectory in some very negative way ah on that compact I think it would raise some pretty serious political consequences and we already know that there are at least minor minor incidents of a political unrest on the basis of of China's economic growth you know when people when people are dislodged when you know villages and cities are you hit with toxins or other pollutants or when corrupt officials do land grabs and and move persons off the land in return for bribes or you know kickbacks for industrialization and and and other activity we see even in those circumstances there's a there's a fair bit of unhappiness and unrest although it's relatively under control what would happen if for example there were to be a property bubble burst or if for some reason the Chinese economy were too slow more considerably you know more than more than sort of peasant unrest or you know problems in the in the countryside arising I think they're going to begin to hit the pocketbook of a group in China who may well be the strongest supporters of the Chinese Communist Party namely the middle to upper-middle class who have benefited so enormously from chinese communist party leadership of the economy so yeah I think you know if that if such a crisis were to arise that would have very very serious political implications i would think and you know you scratch your head and you wonder what would it take what sort of crisis would have to unfold in China to dislodge or seriously threaten the Chinese Communist Party it's hard to come up with very many good examples at least for me but i think one certainly would be a major economic crisis of some kind that dramatically turned that equation around that that that social compact around and for people to believe that tomorrow is not going to be a better day that their savings are lost on their opportunities to grow wealthier in the future are beginning to be eroded I think that would be a real serious problem politically for the leadership I'm not predicting that i'm simply saying it certainly would.
Be a problem and and the Chinese come as leadership fully understand that and that's why they're working hard to figure out this third way so they can stay in place and keep the engine going Thank You professor a simple question do you think is it possible for president ctp to make frame with President Trump and how do you look for our future as I know us relationship.
Thank you i was wondering that question would come along.
Thank you very much for asking it because of course I've been giving it a great deal of thought I'm very very hard to say unfortunately we do not know a lot about mr. Trump and his foreign policy views except what he's said thus far on the campaign trail we don't have a real record right of of statements of of real-life scenarios of conversations across the table with with leaders of the stature of a president sheet we don't know we have no idea on top of that what little we might claim to know about the people who are advising him on issues in relation to China and again much of this may be here say it's it's it we just don't know who these people are but if some of the things we've heard are true these are no friends of China they have been quite strong in their views about the need to push back against China in their views that engagement with China is a fool's errand that containment is the proper approach to this rising power and of course that we are currently in their view currently in a pathway to ruin both in terms of security and economic spheres because this past several decades worth of engagement and attempts to try and work with China and find constructive pathways forward whether those individuals who have been so engaged in the campaign would somehow rise to positions of power within an administration we don't know yet so I don't know I I honestly don't know it's very you do you think about what he has said on the campaign if that's what he believes then.
Well it's going to be a difficult relationship with China to start to start maybe he like so many other presidents before him once in office and once fully apprised of the realities of the relationship with China will change his thinking and return to at least a moderately constructive effort to to work you know to seek the best one can while preparing for the worst I'm maybe he will but you know this this is a we're going into very unknown territory here president Trump takes office in January.


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